Gunnar Skirbekk
ECNU Shanghai
May 2007
(27.04.)
PHILOSOPHICAL EDUCATION
What, why, how – and for whom?
A lecture marking the publication of the book “Timely Thoughts” in Chinese
I first visited this university in the spring of 1991. At that time I had known Tong Shijun for a couple of years. And at that time (1991) I had the pleasure and honor of meeting colleagues and students at this campus, including Professor Feng Qi. Since then I have returned to East China Normal University several times, and some scholars from Shanghai have visited me and my colleagues in Bergen. In these 16 years much has changed, not least in Shanghai and at East China Normal University. And at this occasion I would like to express my sincere gratitude for the collaboration and friendship that has developed during this period, and my admiration for the great achievements that I have witnessed in your country and at your campus.
Few things are as rewarding and uplifting as the task of teaching philosophy to young people – when they still are open and not blasé, before they have found their way, in some field or discipline. A meaningful and exciting task, if you ask me – but also involving great responsibility. What are we doing to them, really?
We hope for the best. And even if it is not quite true, as it is said: “All they need is love”, it is certainly true that a teacher has to like that which one is talking about and to like those one is talking to. If not, it won’t work. And then one certainly has to know what one is talking about and know how to talk about it, to (and with) the others. Love for wisdom, as the old Greek said – literally “philo-sophia” – and that’s what it is all about, also here.
So, philosophical education, that is the theme for this lecture – related to the questions: what, why, how – and for whom? And to start with the latter question: My focus today is general philosophical education, philosophical education for students who do not intend to become professional philosophers within some special field, nor for those who have a personal and special philosophical interest that they want to pursue – that is, my focus is philosophy as a general formation and education.
And this is a theme, I assume, with some special relevance for an elite institution for the education of teachers in a country with a long and impressive philosophical tradition, a university like East China Normal University, that even has an amazing and urgent appeal, carved in stone, in the midst of its campus: “seek truth, foster originality, and live up to the name of teacher”.
However, in this lecture I shall primarily refer to what at the outset was seen as western philosophy. Moreover, I shall focus on education within the framework of modern mass institutions, with exams and degrees; this implies that I shall not focus on the special interpersonal relationships that probably are required for a deeper transmission of virtues and wisdom.
General philosophical education for young people in modern universities: What is the point? What is the topic? What is the way of teaching? I shall not start with the pedagogical question, but conceive this question (“how”) from the point of view of what the topic should be, and why, for these students.
Nor shall I start with the topic, taken isolatedly, as we might have done in cases of educating those who are going to be professional philosophers.
In our case, general education for young people, these three questions are interconnected: why, what and how.
How should we approach these questions? One answer goes as follows: Young people today live in modern societies, and here we take this to mean: in knowledge-based and differentiated societies, with different cultures, religions and world views. This situation gives rise to several philosophically related questions:
(i) There are many kinds of knowledge, for instance related to everyday practices and personal experiences; but in modern societies many important kinds of knowledge are based on scientific and scholarly research. However, the sciences and the humanities are differentiated into various disciplines and subdisciplines, each of them conceiving, “screening”, their field of knowledge by their own notions and methods. In short, scientific and scholarly disciplines are perspectivistic. Thus there is a need for an ongoing reflection on what the various disciplines can and cannot yield, in relation to each other and to our life-world experiences. Moreover, the results of scientific and scholarly research are in principle fallible, and hence we have to realize that the various kinds of perspectivistic knowledge are also uncertain. And finally we have the ongoing debate on what counts as scientifically and scholarly good or bad research, and from there on, how and where the border should be drawn between the sciences (and the humanities) on the one hand and nonsense on the other; or rather how should we conceive the relationship between astronomy and astrology? And what about Darwinism versus creationism, science-based medicine versus New Age healing, or meteorological weather-forecast versus prophecies based on witchcraft?
All in all this means that insight in the philosophy of the sciences and the humanities (Wissenschaftsphilosophie) should be part of a general educational program in philosophy in our societies. And scientific and scholarly research should not be conceived as being dogmatic, i.e. as giving the one right and certain answer to theoretical questions, or as being instrumentally safe and secure, giving the one and final solution to various practical problems. Scientific and scholarly research should not be conceived “scientistically” in the sense just mentioned, but rather be conceived as a fallible, but (hopefully) self-improving activity, i.e. “as organized skepticism” (Merton).
(ii) Modern societies, with a science-based development of knowledge and technology, have unintendedly given rise to many political and moral challenges, e.g. of an ecological nature. Thereby we are already within the realm of normative questions, questions that in a decisive sense are philosophical.
Furthermore, in modern societies we encounter a large field of different cultural and religious convictions and traditions – some of these will need an intellectual and institutional modernization, while others have long ago adapted to the institutional and scientific and reflective presuppositions of modern societies. Hence we are faced with problems of inter-cultural and inter-convictional dialogues, but also, for instance, with challenges related to fundamentalist convictions in Judaism, Christianity and Islam, as well as between these monotheistic theologies and other religions and agnostic and atheistic convictions.
These are urgent challenges, and they include questions – e.g. concerning normative argumentation and conceptual analyses – that ask for typically philosophical “treatments”. In short, moral and political philosophy should be included.
All in all, here again we have a reasonable answer to the question about the point of a general philosophical formation and education for young people at our universities.
In emphasizing the role and importance of philosophy, once we are faced with these modern challenges (point i and ii above), we should at the same time consider the relationship between what philosophy can do in this respect and what can be done by the various empirical sciences and hermeneutic disciplines, or by theology, or by poetic (literary) expressions.
These are themselves questions of the philosophy of the sciences and the humanities (and of the critical self-reflection of philosophy itself). But in coping with such questions it is not sufficient to be philosophically trained and educated, one also has to be sufficiently knowledgeable about these other fields of knowledge and of normative and existential insights.
But apparently there are basic normative questions that do require a philosophical “treatment” – such as the question of a possible justification of context-transcending norms (for the regulation of basic forms of conflict) or the question of an ongoing reflection on basic presuppositions in various activities, be they scientific or scholarly, or be they theological or ideological.
What are the implications for us, discussing the question of a general philosophical education for students who do not intend to become philosophers by profession? Well, we took our point of departure in the need for basic philosophical orientation in modern knowledge-based and differentiated societies, and on this background we have indicated why we should include philosophy of the sciences and the humanities as well as political and moral philosophy.
To be sure, these are difficult questions, and it remains to find out how they could be coped with on an introductory level.
Moreover, even when we start with relatively concrete questions in the philosophy of the sciences and the humanities, or in moral and political philosophy, there are immanent reasons why we may easily end up with basic philosophical questions.
Bluntly stated, we may soon encounter the Kantian questions: What can I know? What shall I do? What dare I hope for? What is Man? (And what is society?) And as we know, within philosophy there are different views on these questions, on how knowledge, morality and religion can and ought to be conceived – and thereby on how we should conceive of ourselves, of Man. For instance, within the theory of knowledge (epistemology) we do not merely have the Sophists versus Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, but also the discussions between rationalists, empiricists and proponents of a Kantian approach, as well as pragmatic conceptions of various kinds, and phenomenologists and hermeneuticians, etc. And similarly for political or moral philosophy.
In other words, in order to work philosophically one has to know a certain repertoire of positions and argumentations. In philosophy knowledge in-depth requires knowledge of relevant alternative approaches.
In practical terms this means that one cannot avoid a certain introduction into the history of philosophy; philosophy and the history of philosophy are intertwined.
But again, the history of philosophy could be presented in different ways. What is needed here, for the education in philosophy for young people, is an argumentative presentation that at the same time gives prominence to the relevance and current interest of the various questions and topics, and that focuses on important clusters of discussion (like the ones just mentioned, between Sophists and Socrates or between rationalists and empiricists, or similar clusters of discussion in Chinese philosophy).
Furthermore, when studying the history of philosophy the students should ideally also read a certain selection of original texts, so that the philosophers referred to could make themselves heard (as it were), with their different style and “temperature” (or “spirit”).
All of this should be given in a pedagogical “package”: In such a “package” the students should also be engaged in discussing central topics that they find interesting, on the background of an argumentative and relevance-oriented presentation of the history of philosophy, focusing on central discussions and supplemented with selected texts of major thinkers.
These two approaches, discussion among the students, starting with problems as they are conceived here and now, and reading of classical texts (one approach “bottom up” and the other “top down”, as it were), should be assessed with respect to the danger of a one-dimensional formation – a one-sidedness that may occur if one merely discusses on the background of one’s own preferences without transcending one’s own preferences (and pre-judices), or if one becomes so overwhelmed by some classical author (be it Lenin, Plato or Foucault) that one thereby believes to have seen the light for all times, the one and only truth.
Taking philosophy seriously one has to be acquainted with counter-arguments and alternative positions and ways of thinking. Self-critical reflection is philosophically necessary, and hence one has to know a certain repertoire of discursive contexts with relevance to the questions that one finds interesting. For this purpose there is a need for live lectures, for motivating lectures that put problems in perspectives, and for written presentations from the history of philosophy that are argumentative and that highlight the general and present importance of the problems dealt with by various philosophers and in various discursive contexts of the history of philosophy.
Moreover, in talking about philosophical texts we do not merely have the distinction between so-called “original texts” and traditional, more or less descriptive histories of philosophy.
Firstly, a history of philosophy may also be written argumentatively and with an emphasis on its relevance for today’s thinking.
Secondly, in addition to these kinds of texts we also have scholarly books and articles on certain philosophers or philosophical problems – this is the domain for philosophy as a scholarly discipline.
Thirdly, there are collections of texts, in books or journals, presenting high quality contributions from various living philosophers to certain ongoing discussions – this might be discussions about certain past philosophers, or it might be discussions between living philosophers, as in anthologies of the kind “so-and-so and his Critics” (cf Habermas, Critical Debates, and Rorty and his Critics, etc.).
Hence the variety of philosophical texts is far richer that what is indicated when we talk in terms of a distinction between “original literature” and “secondary literature”.
Here we touch upon the tricky question of what we might call the “place” of philosophy (the topos of philosophy, to use the Greek term): What, and where, is philosophy? In a statement (be it of a famous thinker)? In a certain paragraph? In a classical work? Or in the whole textual corpus of a thinker? Or rather in a discursive context to which a given textual corpus belongs – a discursive context that somehow is impregnated by a historical situation, for instance characterized by political or scientific challenges?
This question about the “topos” of philosophy – where is philosophy to be found? – leads us into basic hermeneutic problems. But for our purpose, the question of general philosophical education, I shall just make a couple of comments:
(i) Yes, it is desirable to be aware of all these “places” (topoi) – it is worthwhile dwelling upon statements and quotes, to read and interpret them cautiously and in depth, it is worthwhile reading books or articles, to get an understanding of the interrelationship between parts and wholes, and it is worthwhile getting acquainted with the whole textual corpus of a genuine thinker.
(ii) But it is also worthwhile to see a text (and a thinker) in relation to relevant discursive and historical contexts. And for our question (the education in philosophy for young people) I think it is especially important to pay attention to the need for an emphasis on the discursive contexts and historical contexts, e.g. contexts in terms of scientific and political challenges in the time of the thinker. To take a few examples from European history of philosophy:
It is certainly valuable for those who seek a general philosophical education to get acquainted with texts from Plato or Aristotle, or Descartes or Locke or Kant. But to understand Kant, one has to see “what he is driving at”, negatively and positively, for instance his attempt to defend natural science (Newton and causality, as Kant saw it) against what he conceived of as an undermining skepticism (in Hume), and similarly his defense of a (formal) morality connected to personal autonomy, and not to utility of mere emotions. In short, in order to understand Kant, we have to get an understanding of his discursive setting.
Similarly it is important to see rationalists like Descartes and Spinoza, trying to formulate philosophy in terms of some kind of an axiomatic system, in a discursive and historical context characterized by the emerging natural sciences, formulated in a mathematical language. And Aristotle can hardly be fully understood without his discursive relationship to Plato and other early Greek thinkers, just as Plato is situated in arguing against the skepticism of the Sophists. Or take Locke’s political philosophy, based on individuals and contracts, with its background in a new historical situation and with its impacts on later thinkers. And similar points can be made for Chinese and Indian philosophy.
These are hermeneutic points: the context matters. It is a question of understanding what is said and why.
Then we may ask: By situating these thinkers in these terms, do we thereby relativize their insights and claims? Well, it depends. By this contextualization we get a better understanding of what is said and why. Moreover, the deeper challenges that these thinkers were facing are also our challenges today – take e.g. Kant: how to conciliate the interrelationship between scientific knowledge, moral obligation, and religious faith? A modern challenge, giving rise to question whether the Kantian response could be relevant also for us: Could reflective analyses of basic preconditions represent a fruitful way of dealing with some of the philosophical problems involved? These, for sure, are modern (all too modern) challenges – even though there is more to be said, after Kant, e.g. related to Hegel or Marx, or Kierkegaard or Heidegger, and further on.
Bluntly stated: seeing philosophy in terms of discursive and historical contexts (especially scientific and political challenges) does not merely help us understand what is said and what is at stake, but also to see the validity-claims embedded in these philosophies, and hence to take an active and argumentative attitude towards these claims. And we might add: this attention to the discursive and historical settings of earlier thinkers might also serve to remind us of our own discursive and historical situatedness.
Now we have sought the “place” of philosophy (its topos) in various kinds of texts and their contexts. But what about philosophy and spoken language?
We recall that Plato, this great author, expresses his skepticism concerning the written word (in the seventh letter); and Descartes exclaims that he has not learnt much from the study of the writings for earlier thinkers. So maybe the topos of philosophy is not primarily in the shelves of a library, but rather in the face to face dialogues in the seminar, or even in the personal (non-written) pondering on philosophical questions?
Well, evidently we need them both, both texts and dialogues (and personal ponderings). Not either-or, but both. And this point is also of importance for the question of a general philosophical education. But before we look at the practical implications for such an education I would like to pay attention to a couple of related points:
A philosophical text is one thing, our attitude towards the text another. In this respect there is a classical distinction between intention obliqua and intention recta, in short, a distinction (as an “ideal type”) between a descriptive attitude and a problem-related attitude, that is: (i) either regarding a text and its message as something factual that we may “have” (as a piece of knowledge, as it were) and that we may talk about to others (be it as teachers to the students or as students during an exam), or (ii) conceiving a text and its message as a challenge that we should try to assess actively and critically, taking its various validity-claims seriously.
Broadly speaking, there is for instance a distinction between (i) a scholar who is an expert on Heidegger and knows a lot about Heidegger and his writings, on a philological and historical level, and (ii) a person who has studied Heidegger thoroughly and has taken his claims seriously, personally, and thus may have become convinced that Heidegger is basically right. Both are scholars, both might be teachers, but the latter might also be a preacher – for good or bad!
The good thing with the latter attitude is that the basic validity-claims of Heidegger are taken seriously. The bad thing, as we have presented it, is a lack of awareness of critical perspectives on Heidegger’s thinking. (As we know, e.g. from John Stuart Mill: one can only have confidence in one’s own believes when one is actively open for counter-arguments and alternative perspectives.) So there is an internal philosophical need for a reflective questioning of Heidegger’s thinking (or of any other philosopher that is taken seriously). And hence there is a need for getting acquainted with relevant discursive contexts. In the case of a deep thinker like Heidegger, this implies a need for a reasonable acquaintance with the basic positions and ways of thinking in the whole of philosophy (not only from neighboring phenomenologists and philosophers of existence, but also for instance from analytic philosophers like Ryle and Wittgenstein).
But on this pluralistic level, considering a variety of positions and ways of thinking, there is a similar distinction between a rather descriptive and a problem-related attitude. At this level the former (descriptive) attitude may lead to a basic skepticism: There are all kinds of different philosophies, contextualized and situated, and the question of validity, of truth, seems to be out of reach – since this question too is situated and contextualized!
In contrast, where could the latter (problem-related) attitude lead us? Well, into deep waters, for sure – taken really seriously this attitude, related to a plurality of philosophical positions and ways of thinking, is that of genuine philosophers, transcending the general requirements for scholars and also for those seeking a general philosophical education. At the same time, everybody studying or teaching philosophy should acquire some basic critical insights concerning various philosophical positions and ways of thinking (like the ones against logical positivism, recognized by the proponents themselves, after ongoing discussions and learning-processes). There are internal as well as external criticisms of various positions and ways of thinking, criticisms that should be considered by any student of philosophy. Hence, there is also a basis for possible improvements, for an effort to overcome what is less well established than it could and should be. Hence there is a basis for real philosophical education, also at a general level.
But again, this requires an active and discursive attitude, and practice. And hence we are evidently faced with a decisive pedagogical requirement, a requirement as to how to teach philosophy for young people: a problem-oriented attitude and a discursive practice are required.
From the what, why, and for whom, we have now come to some recommendations as to the how:
In our context, aiming at a general philosophical education for young people in modern societies, I will emphasize the value of a focus on a certain repertoire of historically situated discursive contexts, that is, a strong element of the history of philosophy, presented in an argumentative and problem-oriented way, and supplemented with selected original texts (depending on the capabilities of the students). Simultaneously I will emphasize the need for live lectures as well as working groups with live discussions among students and with personal writing-experiences for the students, under supervision (and adapted to their needs and capabilities).
In short, I would recommend a pedagogical “package” containing various activities: reading, writing, talking and listening – all together in an ongoing learning-process. (Think of situations where people mainly do one of these things: either read, without writing, nor talking or listening – or write, without reading, nor talking or listening – or talk, without listening, nor reading or writing – or listen, without talking, nor reading or writing. For sure, an intellectual horror! And still I guess that we recognize some tendencies of this kind, in our own intellectual environment!)
Furthermore I would recommend, for instance in teaching the history of philosophy, that one tries to bring together the concern for validity-questions and the concern of situatedness: As teachers we should first of all pay attention to questions, not to the answers, since what might be conceived as answers is hardly intelligible and meaningful without an understanding of the kind of question that lies behind. Here, for sure, philosophy is different from instrumental disciplines, like mechanics, where the underlying questions (as well as the practical applications) are learnt once for all.
And between the question and the answer we have the arguments that are supposed to support that answer – and philosophical arguments, and points, are of various kinds.
Finally we should consider the background and preconditions behind the underlying or explicit questions, and also the implications of the answer as it is conceived in this setting.
To take an example: Thales, the old Greek philosopher, is supposed to have said that everything is water. Taken at face value, a nonsensical answer! But if we assume that the underlying question is that of understanding change, and thus of understanding what is happening in the world, and assuming that water is seen as the basic element that can take on all other shapes – firstly by becoming ice or damp, and secondly by becoming all other things – then the implication is immensely important: Since we in principle can understand water – it is a natural phenomenon – we can also, consequently, understand everything in the universe; nothing is beyond our understanding, nothing is magic or unintelligible. In short, we are given a license for an exploration of the universe through human inquiry! And from there, the discussion went on. This was the beginning of Greek philosophy.
This scheme – looking at the interplay between question, reasons, and answer, and also focusing on the background and the preconditions on the one hand and the implications on the other – may also be of help in our effort to understand contemporary thinkers. For instance, the experiences of the Second World War should definitely be taken into account in assessing the discussion on universally binding norms in Apel and Habermas. And French post-modernist thinking should be seen in a French setting, with a highly intellectual elite (say, at Sorbonne, or at Ecole Normale Supérieure), where everybody knows everything, and a public space (say, across Place de la Sorbonne, on Boulevard St. Michel) where one is supposed to express oneself sharply, though with a kind of double reflection behind it – hence everybody taking it for what it is. But then these texts are exported to some university campus in the US, becoming compulsory reading on some reading-list on “French Thought”, leading to scholarly articles and books in English, which again are imported elsewhere in the world, and read seriously by those who want to keep up with French thinking!
So, as a conclusion, what is needed philosophically, for this pedagogical “package”? Let me cautiously point at the following desiderata, as I see them:
There is a need for a formation through learning processes and an orientation through an acquaintance with a certain repertoire of different positions and ways of thinking, by discursive contexts from the history of philosophy, and from contemporary philosophy.
There is a need for reflection on explicit and implicit preconditions, in terms of cautious analyses of presuppositions, a reflection that may be critical as well as reconstructive.
There is a need for cautious analyses of concepts, as they are used in various settings, tacitly in everyday dealings as well as in argumentation of various kinds.
These are validity-related philosophical activities. But in addition there is a need for a focus on the creative aspect of philosophical thinking, as it is alluded to with the term “redescription” (in Rorty, or Welterschlie?ung in Heidegger).
And there is a need for a focus on a retrospective approach (as in Hegel, “bringing experiences on concept”), whereby one tries to articulate and reappropriate important experiences of the past.
Finally it is worthwhile underlining that philosophy is indeed a multifarious endeavor, taking different ways of working. In this connection we should pay attention to the philosophical usage of examples, often in terms of thought-experiments, whereby some basic points are “shown”, not empirically confirmed nor logically proven, and nor are these examples just pedagogical illustrations for other people of points and insights already recognized by the speaker. In philosophy we may also use examples in order to “find out” and “show” points that earlier are not seen or seen in that way.
Finally it is also worthwhile underlining that philosophy may proceed by narratives, making us see some points from another angle, possibly in a new perspective, or by explicating how one sees the world, by referring to aspects of one’s own learning-process.
This was our question: general philosophical education, for young people in a modern society. And the answer? Ideally, an appropriate response is evidently quite demanding. But still the philosophical education of young students is highly rewarding, even when we as teachers are unable to live up to all the ideal requirements – it is rewarding as long as we really like what we are doing, what we are talking about and those to whom and with whom we are talking.
And for the students? Hopefully they too would experience this kind of a philosophical education as meaningful and important.